The Fountains of Paradise

So here It was, hoping that the children would enable It to understand the adults into which they eventually metamorphosed. Sometimes they told the truth; but even when they were being playful (another difficult concept) and dispensed negative information, the Starholmer could now recognise the signs.

Yet there were times when neither the children, nor the adults, nor even ARISTOTLE knew the truth. There seemed to be a continuous spectrum between absolute fantasy and hard historical facts, with every possible graduation in between. At the one end were such figures as Columbus and Leonardo and Einstein and Lenin and Newton and Washington, whose very voices and images had often been preserved. At the other extreme were Zeus and Alice and King Kong and Gulliver and Siegfried and Merlin, who could not possibly have existed in the real world. But what was one to make of Robin Hood or Tarzan or Christ or Sherlock Holmes or Odysseus or Frankenstein? Allowing for a certain amount of exaggeration, they might well have been actual historic personages.

The Elephant Throne had changed little in three thousand years, but never before had it supported the weight of so alien a visitor. As the Starholmer stared into the south, It compared the half-kilometre-wide column soaring from the mountain peak with the feats of engineering It had seen on other worlds. For such a young race, this was indeed impressive. Though it seemed always on the point of toppling from the sky, it had stood now for fifteen centuries.

Not, of course, in its present form. The first hundred kilometres was now a vertical city-still occupied at some of its widely-spaced levels – through which the sixteen sets of tracks had often carried a million passengers a day. Only two of those tracks were operating now; in a few hours the Starholmer and Its escorts would be racing up that huge, fluted column, on the way back to the Ring City that encircled the globe.

The Holmer everted Its eyes to give telescopic vision, and slowly scanned the zenith. Yes, there it was – hard to see by day, but easy by night when the sunlight streaming past the shadow of Earth still blazed upon it. The thin, shining band that split the sky into two hemispheres was a whole world in itself, where half-a-billion humans had opted for permanent zero-gravity life.

And up there beside Ring City was the starship that had carried the envoy and all the other Companions of the Hive across the interstellar gulfs. Even now it was being readied for departure – not with any sense of urgency, but several years ahead of schedule, in preparation for the next six-hundred-year lap of its journey. That would represent no time at all to the Starholmer, of course, for It would not reconjugate until the end of the voyage, but then It might well face the greatest challenge of Its long career. For the first time a Starprobe had been destroyed – or at least silenced – soon after it had entered a solar system. Perhaps it had at last made contact with the mysterious Hunters of the Dawn, who had left their marks upon so many worlds, so inexplicably close to the Beginning itself. If the Starholmer had been capable of awe, or of fear, It would have known both, as It contemplated its future, six hundred years hence.

But now It was on the snow-dusted summit of Yakkagala, facing mankind's pathway to the stars. It summoned the children to Its side (they always understood when It really wished to be obeyed) and pointed to the mountain in the south.

"You know perfectly well," It said, with an exasperation that was only partly feigned, "that Earthport One was built two thousand years later than this ruined palace." The children all nodded in solemn agreement. "Then why," asked the Starholmer, tracing the line from the zenith down to the summit of the mountain, "why do you call that column – the Tower of Kalidasa?"

AFTERWORD

SOURCES AND ACKOWLEDGMENTS

The writer of historical fiction has a peculiar responsibility to his readers, especially when he is dealing with unfamiliar times and places. He should not distort facts or events, when they are known; and when he invents them, as he is often compelled to do, it is his duty to indicate the dividing line between imagination and reality.

The writer of science fiction has the same responsibility, squared. I hope that these notes will not only discharge that obligation but also add to the reader's enjoyment.

Taprobane and Ceylon

For dramatic reasons, I have made three trifling changes to the geography of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). I have moved the island eight hundred kilometres south, so that it straddles the equator – as indeed it did twenty million years ago, and may some day do again. At the moment it lies between six and ten degrees north.

In addition, I have doubled the height of the Sacred Mountain, and moved it closer to "Yakkagala". For both places exist, very much as I have described them.